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Thursday, September 19, 2019

God and Man at Yale, by William F. Buckley, Jr.

When William F. Buckley, Jr., published God and Man at Yale in 1951, it made a huge splash in the academic world, the political world, and launched a great career in journalism and political commentary.  Buckley, who later founded National Review magazine and hosted "Firing Line" for decades, became a fixture in American political media, and this book is what started it all.

So for that historical context, God and Man at Yale is an important and interesting read.  Buckley opines about his student days at Yale, calling out specific professors and textbooks to demonstrate the anti-Christian, anti-capitalist attitudes that had begun to prevail in one of America's oldest and most distinguished institutions of higher learning.  He didn't make many friends in the Yale community with this book, but he made a lot of friends and gained a following in the wider world.

The references are dated and the professors are more than likely all dead, but the book remains in print because of the questions it raises.  Academic freedom and the predominance of left-wing ideas remain hot topics in universities today.  And the conservative movement of which he was at the vanguard continues to own much of its intellectual energy to Buckley.  Read through the filter of history, the relevance still shouts out to the reader.



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